Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion by Sam Harris (PDF)

Description

For the millions of Americans who want spirituality without religion, Sam Harris’s latest New York Times bestseller is a guide to meditation as a rational practice informed by neuroscience and psychology.From Sam Harris, neuroscientist and author of numerous New York Times bestselling books, Waking Up is for the twenty percent of Americans who follow no religion but who suspect that important truths can be found in the experiences of such figures as Jesus, the Buddha, Lao Tzu, Rumi, and the other saints and sages of history. Throughout this book, Harris argues that there is more to understanding reality than science and secular culture generally allow, and that how we pay attention to the present moment largely determines the quality of our lives. Waking Up is part memoir and part exploration of the scientific underpinnings of spirituality. No other book marries contemplative wisdom and modern science in this way, and no author other than Sam Harris—a scientist, philosopher, and famous skeptic—could write it.

User’s Reviews

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐This review could be summed up in a single sentence “Read Robert Wright, ‘Why Buddhism is True: The Science and Philosophy of Meditation and Enlightenment’ instead.”I came to Waking Up a little bit sceptically, having been put off by Sam Harris many times before. But I’d heard good things about Waking Up, and was really interested in hearing what he had to say in terms of a positive vision. I was even willing to give him a pass on the obligatory nasty, self-congratulatory religion bashing I’ve come to expect from him (to be clear, I’m also an atheist, and I share much of Harris’ general world view). So, I was determined not to let the first chapter of anti-Muslim and anti-Christian boilerplate grumbling affect my review. I was also determined not to let the crass cultural oversimplification “Easterns can’t do science but are good at psychology; Westerns can’t do psychology but did all the real science” affect my rating. And if you like that sort of thing, it’s there. Whatever.It was the meat of the book that held my interest. And Harris is a good writer, and sailed along just fine for a while. I liked the chapters on meditation. They were a bit long on anecdote, but fun and informative. If two or three of those chapters were taken on their own, I’d have given the book a 5 star review. But then, at the point where he laid all the groundwork on mindfulness, and no-self, and the emotional benefits of meditation, he just kind of stopped.So, I get that meditation can help you feel happier, or blissful, or ‘one’ with the universe. I get that there is no true ‘self’, and we can experience that enlightenment first hand. But Harris never gets into the practical or philosophical consequences of these experiences, or enlarges on the “what next”. It was frustrating, because he led up to this feeling that our spiritual practice of mindfulness and concentration, and even no self should have some bigger implications, than a little bit of self-indulgent woo. Especially after he describes Buddhism as a practical user’s manual for the mind.Instead he digresses into a few chapters on mind altering drugs (fun, vaguely interesting stuff) and the difficulty of weeding out predators and kooks from real gurus. Then he bashes Christians and Muslims a bit more, and that’s it.Now I’m mostly through Wright’s “Why Buddhism is True”, and it’s already covered all the ground Harris covers, in much greater depth, and to much better effect. Not only does Wright focus on the experiential aspects of meditation, but he spends a lot of time exploring the deeper and broader implications of Buddhist practice and belief. And along the way, Wright explores a few classic sutras of the Buddha, and shows how they might be interpreted as a systematic and rigorous program of self-questioning.This is what I wanted from Harris. Something that explains the problems and contradictions of our Western understanding of the mind and spirituality; that discusses beliefs and practices which can illuminate these problems; and that explores the issues in a way that promises personal growth and intellectual progress. Harris got about half way there, and meanwhile got bogged down in his own narrow conceits.

⭐What a great book. I was born and grew up in Theravada Buddhist family. Even as a teenager I saw the value in the 4 Noble truths. But I couldn’t quite come to grips with the idea of Reincarnation & the Law of Karma. That sounded like a ” Celestial Accounting System that worked on Auto Pilot”. To me that seems as nonsensical as the “Old Man in the Sky” offered by Abrahamic religions.Especially when as a young Buddhist one of the first things I remember learning is Buddha’s admonishment to “Never believe in Dogma. But to sift all teachings(including his) through your own experiential filter. Then if it it still seems valid to try it on”. When you just take that teaching into heart and try on the concepts Karma & Reincarnation; it makes the 8 fold noble path a moot point.But Sam Harris brings a new perspective. Damn You Sam Harris! your arguments takes away my excuses for staying away from the meditation cushion.It is a pretty dense subject matter. With a chapter on Consciousness and another one on Self. While some of it was new and interesting, other ideas might take 2nd or 3rd reading to get through my thick skull.I think every Buddhist should read and consider what is laid out here. I highly recommend to anyone who has a intellectual curiosity about spirituality. Yet from my experience I know that only few of the most ardently spiritual would dare to tackle it. Between Sam Harris and Stephen Batchelor’s writing they extend the Buddhas admonishment for experiential learning by applying 21st century rationality to the inquiry. These two writers and their writing gives a good intellectual foundation to wade into spirituality with healthy dose of 21st century agnosticism.

⭐Here’s one of the many examples that Sam Harris uses throughout this book regarding consciousness: Suppose you’re going to Mars via a teleport machine. Many of your friends have already done this safely and are already on Mars. But what the creator of this teleport machine doesn’t tell you is your whole being down to every last atom is copied and reconstructed on Mars. The “copy” has all your memories, your appearance, etc, and is essentially you. Then your body on Earth is vaporized painlessly in a split second. To ensure safety, the reconstruction must be finished before vaporization. This poses a few interesting points about consciousness. Because reconstruction must be finished first, does that mean there are two conscious people that are considered you? If you can be reconstructed by a machine, what does this say about consciousness? Is conscious defined by physical continuity or physiological continuity, as with the teleport machine? If you knew how this teleport machine actually worked, would you still do it?All these questions and more are posed to the reader, than Sam Harris explains his views on it via science and logic. I found his arguments sound and in my opinion hard to argue against. Sam Harris is a neurosurgeon and a non-religious spiritual teacher, so he has plenty of experiences to answer these deep questions.I cannot recommend this book enough. I also suggest listening to his podcast “Waking Up”.

⭐First 2 chapters interesting but then got progressively more tedious for me.I found the writing style rather dull and it often caused me to lose interest (maybe that’s just me).It is really good to see a secular stance taken on the matters that are the topic of this book, but I was hoping to find by the end of the book some better direction than typically found in texts of meditation and consciousness. Nothing really shined here.Overall I was rather disappointed, and having then turned to the internet to see the the mountain of material that Sam Harris has produced and the way it is done, ( with high monthly subscription fees for the meditation app) it just seems to me like just yet another money spinning American ‘guru’ franchiseSo, go ahead and read as there is some interesting perspectives but be prepared to have to persevere and don’t expect too much in the end!

⭐If you want to read a book about how terrible religion is, then this book is for you. I agree that religion is flawed and not always a right path to a spiritual life but once you have made that decision, you want to move on. No need to to flog a dead horse and all that. If you want a book that shows you how to grow spiritually without following religion, stick to Eckhart Tolle who is enlightened but not religious or Matthieu Ricard, who is a Buddhist Monk but writes to include a secular audience and researches science backed results on meditation as part of his work.

⭐The book that got meditation to finally “click” for me.I’ve been exposed to mediation and mindfullness based therapies for years professionally within psychology and always thought that they were both ineffective (despite a lot of research into mindfullness in particular) and horribly applied in clinical settings.I still feel that mindfullness is applied incorrectly in a clinical setting for the most part.But I feel that this is largely due to a failure to recognise the “end goal” of mediation practices.This was the book that FINALLY allowed me to understand the goal of mediation in a more practical sense (particular the section “on having no head”).I’d strongly recommend checking out Sam’s longer presentation on Free Will first as a bit of a primer too. It will definitely improve your understanding of this book.The only reason for the 4 stars and not 5 is that I think Sam gets caught too often and for too long on explaining the faults with the more religious and spiritual applications of meditation. Not because I think he is wrong in his characterisations but because I felt it was unnecessary in this book and ultimately detracts from the content rather than adds to it.Highly recommended. Particularly if you never really felt like you understood the point of meditation even if the practice was still appealing.

⭐A strange book this. More science than spirit. The author is opinionated and seems more interested in his ‘journey’ then he is about conveying a spiritual message to help one’s own journey – for me there is many interesting facts about the brain and neurological developments, but the whole thing seems emotionally empty. He does make some interesting points about following gurus blindly and the dangers of drugs. Overall a disappointment as it does nothing to encourage meditation except as a ‘brain medicine’.

⭐The book is mostly about Sam Harris and how after decades of meditating he finally achieved mushin (no-mind). There’s a bit of speculating on the nature of consciousness and what split brain patients experiences might reveal. Oh and he puts the boot into the Judeo-Christian’s for having nothing to say about the nature of mind (unless you cont the odd heretic) – Harris at his best!There’s little in the way of instruction on meditative techniques or practical guidance on how one might attain these deeper spiritual insights oneself.

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